Diary of a Suburban Squeen

Happy New Year to you all, my darlings! Hope 2009 brings sweetness and light and prawn toast to everyone! Unless you’re allergic to shellfish. I’m not a monster.

Anyhow, Christmas and New Year, eh? Well, that was fun. Thank you very much to everyone for my presents – they are all ace. Also, had a party just before Christmas which was also ace, so thanks to everyone who came to that and ATE ALL OUR FOOD! ALL OF IT! though it was as well, what with our biffing off to Sheffield the following day. Had some parental Christmas time. Went out to dinner on Christmas Eve with parents and Chris and Bex, which was vee nice. They had fake snow outside the restaurant (nicer than it sounds), about which my mother became unnecessarily excited. Had a slightly random Christmas day, what with Grandad still being in hospital and all, but it weren’t too bad, all things considered. Drew a C21st Justice & 6-Eyed Girl cartoon for my parents, featuring ‘Stone Woman’, ‘Kryptonian Dad’ and ‘Captain Puniverse’ (my brother’s longstanding alter ego). Mother also extremely excited about that. Also the Bagpuss mouse that sang. I rock.

So, enough of Christmas. New Year. Well, meh. I rather bar New Year, but whatever, it’s time off work. Katie and I pottered and then klo_the_hobbit came over and we watched some beautifully awful stuff. Ah, Freejack: film choice of the gods.

In other news, have used the bread machine quite a lot. I made more soup (a giant surprise there, surely). Also, ooh, excitingly, made CHOCOLATE-COATED PRETZELS!!!! Can there be anything finer? I think not! And I made some tomato and mascarpone sauce for our tea last night, but that’s rather less newsworthy.

Latest TV news: Big Fat Quiz of the Year was joyous as ever (though has yet to reach the dizzy heights of the Goth Detectives year). Jimmy Carr was looking bizarrely skinny. Made (not that it exactly took a lot of effort) Katie watch Leverage. How inconceivably gorgeous is that show? It’s so ridiculous and yet so adorable. I love team shows – it’s what makes NCIS such a thing of glory. <3 <3 <3

Cookery Book: Bread and Bread Machines
Provenance: Random purchase at the NT shop at Ham House
Picture Level: Pretty darned good, actually. Pictures for everything.

Recipe: Pesto marbled bread
Ingredients: Pesto, flour, milk, salt, sugar, yeast, water
Why Chosen: Well, we’ve got this jar of pesto in the fridge and I was making Italian…
Outcome: Not so bad, not so bad. Or, um, quite nice actually. Will probably make occasionally.
Mess Created: Minimal – ha! (Or I may have made a giant mess and not really noticed. It’s, uh, hard to remember sometimes.)

How do, chaps. Firstly, what’s with this whole clergy rawring at female bishops? What possible reason could there be for saying women can’t be bishops? Arsemonkeys, say I.

Secondly, I wanted to apologise generally for being totally incommunicative recently and ignoring everyone (except Katie, who doesn’t get that luxury) and being a bit crap. Personally, I blame working in radiology in the evenings and TV. Maybe the other way round, thinking on’t… Anyway, I will try to be better.

Thirdly, my hair is looking particularly splendid today. I will be getting it cut before we go to France, but not short, do not fret. Just a bit of a trim and a shape.

Fourthly, thank you to people for expressing sympathy about Grandma (sorry, that sounds dreadfully stilted!). She was very ill at the end, and I don’t think any of us are hugely weeping-sad, but it’s still woeful. The funeral is next Tuesday. Actually, it will be the first one I’ve ever been to, which is weird. The last person to die in the family (excluding Great Aunt Margaret, whom I didn’t really know that well) was GG (my great-grandmother) when I was 11, and my parents wouldn’t take us to the funeral. Heigh ho, anyway, that’s got nothing to do with anything.

Fifthly, we’re going to see Candide tomorrow, which I’m very excited about!! And next week it’s Hancock at le cinema, ditto. And we saw Major Barbara last week, on a whim, and that was really good. The motto of one of the main characters was “Unashamed”, and Katie and I have adopted it for FT, as it is peculiarly appropriate to our household.

Sixthly (as an addendum), interest has been expressed (OK, by Lorraine, but I want to share) in my newfound comic-reading habits. Thus far I have read Watchmen, V for Vendetta, vols 1&2 of Buffy Season 8, vols 1&2 of Y: The Last Man, vol 1 of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (didn't like it much), vol 1 of Hellboy and Bite Club. They rock.

So, Christmas, eh? Firstly, though today was being slightly dreaded by, I think, everyone, it went off very well indeed and everyone seemed to have a nice time. Grandad looked slightly snurpy when Daddy had a mock against diesel engines to Andrew (Grandad has long been a proponent of the diesel engine; Daddy thinks they're shit), but that was as bad as it got. I changed the subject whenever the ground looked boggy (I get to do that because I'm Daddy's favourite and at the moment I can do no wrong as far as Grandad is concerned). Grandad's still slightly dodgy on his feet, and has put on so much weight in the past couple of months (I think because of the drugs he's on) that he looks completely different to usual. But actually it was lovely to see everyone, and share presents (and to give and receive presents that people like - we tend to be quite good about that in our family), and just be together, and be huggy and chatty and catch up and mock Andrew's driving and Matthew's girlfriend and Chris's city slicker ways and my hair. And *g* I showed Grandma the end of my Christmas speech, where she and Grandad had earned internet fame by virtue of their donation of the grandparental chintz, which tickled her. It was a really, really nice day. Mummy braided my hair, so I felt about twenty years in the past! Chris bought us Yahtzee! And the new Nigella Lawson book. And I got the most genius looking book about Dorothy L Sayers and LPW and the inter-war period, which looks absolutely fascinating, and some Chanel mascara, and a chocolate orange (natch!), and some theatre vouchers (now the question is, cherie, do we blow it all on one show, or eke them out?), and some slipper socks (will my mother's attempt to get me in slippers never cease?!) from my parents, and various bits from the rest of the family, which was all very nice (and an ace CD from Rosie, which I am listening to at the moment). Mummy did an interpretive dance to the flashing rhythm of the fairy lights: a sight to be seen. Grandma got a huge kick out of the little pop-up mouse I got her and chuckled quite considerably. I wore make-up and high heels. We had Christmas lunch instead of dinner, which was super (though obviously, with the mater cooking), and then unexpectedly got salmon sandwiches and ham and beetroot sandwiches and mince pies at tea time. The proper grown-ups may have looked a little askance at these, but the younger generation devoured them whole-heartedly. We watched Galaxy Quest in the afternoon which is always a joy, and then after everyone had gone we watched Little Miss Sunshine, which I bought for Daddy, and which the parentals loved. Me too. I think it's one of the best films to be made in the last few years. I spoke to Katie and Kathye, as is only right and proper.

Anyway, I hope everyone had as nice a day as I did, and the rest of the festive period is nice and jolly and relaxed. Ciao, mes amis! xxx

It’s funny, Nicola’s question got me thinking about Sheffield, and how much of my family’s history is embedded there. I mentioned not being able to drive anywhere without my mother claiming that she had driven along that very road for her driving test. But sometimes it feels like everywhere has that sort of connection. I used to go on the bus past High Storrs School every day to get to school myself, and my aunt was head girl there (she’s still indignant about the speech day fiasco, but we’ll not dwell…). Back in the day, my great-uncle was head boy there as well. Various family members went to school there. Or Abbeydale School, where I took one of my music exams, and which is where my mother went to school (she still has uniform joy, to this very day). Or catching the bus into town, and going past the old grammar school (and God knows how long it’s been since that actually *was* a school), where assorted other relations went (including my grandparents – my grandmother was on their hockey XI – and Cousin Rosemary, who went out with Grandad before he met Grandma). And I have my own memories of life at the High School – sitting on canteen drive with our lunch; catching the number 60 into town, and hoping to get to the bus stop before the Birkdale boys got out, because then the buses weren’t so busy; stopping off at the newsagents to get a quarter of sherbert lemons (or kola kubes in Karen’s case); sitting in the botanic gardens across the road at lunchtime once we got into the Sixth Form; going to the dinky sandwich shop in Broomhill; endless speech days in the Octagon; catching the supertram out to the Don Valley stadium for sports day, and lolling about on the grass trying to do as little as possible and failing to sum up any kind of house pride (not least because Stanley always came either 3rd or 4th at everything – we were definitely *not* the crack house!); going along to the university theatre to watch their French students put on random plays; wandering vaguely towards Broomhill with Catherine for her A-level Geography project and actually managing to get *lost*.

And we drive through Gleadless, and Mummy shows me Grandad’s ‘patch’ from when he was a GP there, and where GG used to live before she moved to Reney Drive, and past the Northern General, where Grandad worked for a while back in the day (and where, thinking about, my mother was allegedly *conceived* - on a hospital bed, during one of Grandad’s breaks when Grandma had smuggled herself in – I just don’t think about it…), and down Bradford Road next to the golf club where Grandma and Grandad Hallatt (Grandad’s parents) lived for about a million years, and up along Lodge Moor where Daddy lived (next door to the house where, in future years, my English teacher, Mrs Storrs, would live), and Scout hut where he went to Scouts, and the golf course up along there where he caddied (very badly), and walking down the Mayfield valley where he used to play when he was little.

My grandparents bought their house in the 60s. It’s just down the road from the house-next-to-the-golf-club where Grandad lived when he was little. I think I’ve spent time there every summer since I was born.

I had the same Latin teacher as my mother (albeit at different schools).

I don’t know – it’s nice, I think, to feel linked to a place like that.

There are many things I love about my maternal family, but one of the most satisfying is the sense of family history we have. My grandmother is an inveterate story teller, and since I was little I have been regaled with tales of generations gone by and all the slightly mental things they have done. This is my grandmother’s family, after all. *g* Nobody’s *actually* mental or in any way particularly interesting. Anty (sic, in order to emphasise the proper northern pronunciation of the word) May, who was the eldest of Grandma’s aunts, used to swan around in pretty frocks, play the piano and have ‘presentiments’ (usually used as an excuse not to run errands); Doris, my great-grandmother, used to do all the work because she was very quiet and obliging (but prone to hysterical laughter in times of trial, something that has sadly been passed down the distaff line), but once forced a factory owner to give the girls a pay rise; Anty Pat, who as far as I can tell didn’t give a flying fuck about anyone and used to wander about playing the violin very badly, and Anty Olive, who was the youngest, and I’m sure there was something slightly off about her, but I can’t remember what it was and Grandma now denies any knowledge of having said anything. I am suspicious. But anyway, it’s nice to have all that, to be told stories of your family, even the people you’ve never known.

And we have about a million photographs, including the absolutely priceless one of Uncle George as a baby. He was Anty Annie’s husband. Anty Annie was a crony of my great-grandmother’s, and also prone to hysterical gales of laughter. I *think* (there’s a lot of family; I often get confused) she was Little Grandad’s sister. Little Grandad was GG’s husband who died long before I was born. GG was also referred to as Little Grandma, to differentiate her from Grandma Hallatt (Grandad’s mother), who was more the scary cake-on-the-head type grandmother. But yes, so Anty Annie married Uncle George, and we have a photo of him as a baby wearing the most giant frilly white dress in the world. He looks darling. But I suspect that photo would have been the bane of his life. Somehow, Grandma’s ended up with all the bits from all the family (we have GG’s and Anty Annie’s wedding dresses), and we occasionally go through it all and I get the stories all over again.

My mother laments that she never recorded GG telling all *her* stories, but I don’t think that’s necessary. Of course some stories get lost by the by, but I don’t think it matters, because they will always be replaced with new ones (ah, Rosie falling down the drains at a camp site, and getting tea leaves in her knickers because she’d had a strop and insisted on wearing the frilliest pair she owned…), and all that matters really is the continuity of passing on stories, whatever the stories themselves happen to be.

On my father’s side, there are very few stories, mainly because, like me, he has forgotten most of his childhood. I have about four anecdotes, none of which have been told by him.

1. When he was little, they were on holiday and he was getting on Grandma’s nerves, so she told him to go away. So he did. Being my father, even at about six or however old he was, this involved going off on a hike by himself. They didn’t find him for a very long time, Grandma was frantic, it ended up in the local newspaper. He’d been larking about in a cave on the beach, happy as Larry.

2. In a similar vein, he went camping on Arran with the Scouts, hated it miserably, and attempted to build a boat and flee the island. I think he even managed to set sail…

3. When he was a teenager, he forced David, his younger brother (by about five years) to listen to The Who until he agreed they were the best band in the world.

4. When he was in the sixth form and going out with my mother, one of the teachers warned her off him. Because he was a bad lot. *giggles* That one always makes me laugh.

Ah, la journée des boîtes: a great day of nothingness. Chris has bopped off to visit Bex et sa famille, Daddy's watching the DVD I bought him (David Lynch, so ranking high in the weirdiness stakes), Mummy's lounging on the sofa. Christmas Day was very jolly, and we were actually allowed a lie-in - a Christmas miracle in itself! None of this mother larking around in dressing gown at seven o'clock singing carols at us, then...

I received many fine presents, and as a family we congratulated ourselves on our mad present buying skillz, because we were all really quite successful. I got my le creuset - huzzah! I can now make rich beef stew *properly* - am very pleased. Et ma tante got me a groovy apron (yes, kitchen minions, this means you too may be aproned up when necessary, and not just in the hostess pinny) and, AND, a typhoon chocolate fondue set WITH a pink bowl that matches my typhoon lasagne dish!!! How much joy!!! And many other delightful things, including, of course, the obligatory chocolate orange (Golly, what could this be? I shall never guess!... you know the drill...). Christmas dinner was lovely, we watched TV, all was merriness and brightness.

AND, I discovered that my birth had been commemorated between my parents by the mater buying the pater a copy of Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy. There is even an inscription to that effect, in my mother's best italianate handwriting. I feel so proud.

Also, I finally received my birthday present from Chris: the box-set of the Man from UNCLE films. However did he possibly know that was what I wanted? I think... yes, I think he is almost definitely psychic.

We went to Hemper Lane to visit the grandparentals on Christmas Eve, and it was lovely to see Grandma, but she was very weak and pathetic, which is so not her, but whatever, she's home now. And Grandad has learned to do mashed potatoes, so every cloud etc etc. Rosie and Andrew were there (Matthew was out doing the Derby evening experience - a thrill for anyone), and Andrew, bless him, has the WORLD'S MOST EMO HAIR. Ever. In the history of the universe. How I laughed at him.

Am safely ensconced chez mes parents, who were yea relieved to see me unexploded. Chris is also home, so we anticipate much in the way of family frolics. My parents had a minor row about the golf and Chris and I dined civilly on insalata caprese and raviola all'arrabiata. If that's how you spell it...

Rosie and les deux garcons will be coming over to G&G's for the weekend, so hopefully there will also be fun family togetherness on a slightly larger scale.

Euge!